2019 to 2020 saw risk-linked deaths from heart disease, stroke up

From 2019 to 2020, there was an increase in risk-associated deaths from heart disease and stroke, according to a research letter published online March 23 in JAMA Network Open.

Stephen Sidney, M.D., from Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland, and colleagues used data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research database to determine the relative contributions of aging versus underlying disease risk in age-adjusted mortality rates for heart disease and stroke from 2011 to 2020.

The researchers found that from 2011 to 2019, there was a 10.4 percent increase in the number of heart disease deaths and a 16.3 percent increase in stroke deaths. From 2019 to 2020, there were increases of 5.8 and 6.8 percent in heart disease and stroke deaths, respectively, with age-associated increases of 1.6 and 1.7 percent, respectively, and risk-associated increases of 4.1 and 5.2 percent, respectively. The mean annual percentage change in risk-associated heart disease and stroke deaths varied from −1.5 to 0.7 percent from 2011 to 2019 for all race and ethnicity groups, while the increases from 2019 to 2020 ranged from 2.3 to 11.9 percent. The highest risk-associated increases were seen in non-Hispanic Black individuals, followed by Hispanics, non-Hispanic Asian or Pacific Islanders, and non-Hispanic Whites.

"We'd made tremendous progress in those areas over the last two decades but have seen much of that progress go out the window since COVID-19 hit," a coauthor said in a statement.